


round and round.

by katarama



Category: Teen Wolf (TV)
Genre: Ace Flux Derek Hale, Aromantic, Asexual Character, Brief mentions of past Kate Argent/Derek Hale, Canon Compliant, Coda, Coping, Cunnilingus, Domestic, Established Relationship, F/M, Face-Sitting, Grey Aro Braeden, Kissing, Light BDSM, Past Character Death, Road Trips, Sex
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-11-01
Updated: 2016-11-01
Packaged: 2018-08-28 08:49:16
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 6,197
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/8439172
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/katarama/pseuds/katarama
Summary: Derek's skin is drenched in sweat from the sun pressed down on him, and the wind whipping around them as he and Braeden speed along on the bike is his only saving grace.  Every time they stop he’s impatient to get back on the road, in spite of his aching muscles, just to be rid of the sticky heat clinging from the overwhelming humidity.
The corn rustles around him again, and he can’t wait to get back to a city.
(post-s4 Draeden coda)





	

Derek doesn’t think he’s seen corn this tall in his entire life.

He’s driven through the Midwest before, once, when he was younger.  He remembers sitting with his legs tucked under him in the passenger’s seat of Laura’s car, the windows cracked to let the cool evening air into the car.  They had air conditioning, but Laura hated using it.  She insisted that it was cooler in late May in the Midwest than it was in California, and she didn’t care enough about the gas mileage she was losing to give up the fresh air.

In hindsight, Derek thinks that it had more to do with her wanting to be able to hear threats.  They didn’t play music the entire drive.  They were in new territory, with no one around to hear them or help them, after just having their home burned to the ground.  It was understandable that she was antsy.

The corn was one of the only things he remembered from the miles and miles of driving; the corn and the giant silos, the feeling of disorienting monotony.  He dozed through most of it, his body tired and his thoughts fuzzy, dulled.  The sleep was restless, filled with shadows and flames.  It almost didn’t feel real when he’d wake up to find that the road looked exactly the same as it did before he closed his eyes, the two-lane-each-way highway stretching on and on and on, framed by miles of corn.

It’s no less monotonous now.  Braeden is probably equally as willfully ignorant of the speed limit as Laura was.  The trip feels even longer, though.  Derek’s butt and legs are falling asleep from hours of perching on the back of Braeden’s motorcycle, his eyes held wide open to avoid dozing and unbalancing the bike.  The late August air is hotter than the late May air, and though Derek knows objectively that the temperatures are probably hotter in California, it doesn’t feel like it.  His skin is drenched in sweat from the sun pressed down on him, and the wind whipping around them as they speed along on the bike is his only saving grace.  Every time they stop he’s impatient to get back on the road, in spite of his aching muscles, just to be rid of the sticky heat clinging from the overwhelming humidity.

The corn rustles with whispers of a breeze that Derek isn’t sure actually exists.  He wonders if it doesn’t, if their motorcycle is just close enough to the edge of the road to create the wind themselves.  The motorcycle rides low to the ground, and the corn is at its tallest, the brown silks at the tips signalling that it’s almost time for harvest.  

The hundreds of miles of corn is almost as oppressive as the heat; he feels surrounded, his ears and his eyes prickling at the constant motion from every direction, setting his nerves on edge.

“We’re almost to Kankakee,” Braeden shouts back to him when she feels him fidgeting.  She doesn’t need to shout; he can hear her, even with the engine and the wind and his helmet, though a human probably couldn’t.  “We’ll stop for gas there, and then we’re about an hour, hour and a half out.  We can order in takeout once we’re done riding for the day.”

Derek lets himself relax some, reminded of the fact that Braeden knows what she’s doing.  She knows highways and town names and rest stops, has safe houses in cities he’s only seen in documentaries on PBS late at night.  His legs are still cramped, and he feels like he needs to roll his shoulders about a hundred times.  He’s hyperaware of the layer of grime and grease covering his skin and jacket from his sunscreen and the road, and he’s excited to finally get to Braeden’s safe house in Chicago to take a nice, long shower.

“Make sure you drink some water,” Braeden reminds him.  Derek carefully fishes his bottle out and takes a long sip, handing it to Braeden to finish off the last of it.  He makes a mental note to refill it in Kankakee, and he refocuses back on the road.

The corn rustles around him again, and he can’t wait to get back to a city.

* * *

 

The thing about being on the road is that it gives Derek too much time to think.

Some of that time is easy to fill.  He talks some with Braeden, to keep them both awake and alert.  He texts Scott a couple times to check in.  Contrary to what his screaming muscles might say, they have actually been breaking pretty regularly, stretching and drinking water and reapplying Braeden’s supposedly non-greasy lotion sunscreen.

Braeden’s used to traveling alone, though, and the wind carries Derek’s voice away, so more often than not, the two of them fall into a comfortable silence.  With sleeping not a viable option, the quiet sends Derek’s thoughts wandering.  He thinks about motorcycles.  About Boyd, and how handy he was with a wrench.  About overhearing Scott get excited as they talked about what customizations they’d make when Scott finally saved up enough to convince his mom to let him buy his first bike.  

It should be a happy thought, but it isn’t.  He doesn’t let himself spend much time there.

He thinks about Braeden.  About the curve of her back and the squeeze of her thighs around the body of the bike.  About the Italian leather boots that hug her calves, and the way he’s sure she’ll sit on the floor of her place later to get the dust from the road off them, a rag in her hand and newspaper on the floor and travel-size bottles and tins of cleaner and polish and conditioner spread around her, because Braeden takes care of what’s hers.  

She seems to count him as part of that, now.  As part of what’s hers.  Derek knows how rare that is, knows how few times she’s felt a romantic connection with someone that she’s fostered, let grow into a relationship.  Derek knows she’ll take care of him, too, when they get to the safe house.  Ordering them food and showing him the shower while they wait, taking her time and washing the dust off their skin, her hair tucked meticulously under her shower cap.  Touching Derek carefully, never lingering in any of the places that make Derek uncomfortable as often as they do aroused.  Not unless he asks her to, at least.

And, predictably, he thinks about corn.  

He thinks about the fact that the next time he and Braeden head this way, the corn won’t be there anymore.  He spitefully thinks that that’s a good thing (and then feels a little bit silly about being spiteful towards corn; it isn’t a person, at least, and he thinks that maybe that can be considered progress).  

But then he starts getting in a little too deep.  Thinking about the birth growth death nature of it.  Thinking about how cyclical it is.  How cyclical everything is.  How his life is just a series of cycles, the birth growth death rebirth cycle, the cycle of the moon.  The cycle of his sexuality, less of a cycle and more uneven and haphazard, yet somehow still interconnected pattern.  He wishes that the wind and the corn, as unnerving as they are, were just a little bit louder.  It might give him some time out of his head, the noise of his thoughts as they work themselves around and around in circles drowned out.  

Even though it means the return of his awareness of the humidity, he’s relieved when he sees the sign announcing the turn-off for Kankakee, and he braces himself against Braeden as the bike turns off the highway and slows down.

* * *

 

When Derek heard “safe house”, he pictured something like the small apartment he and Laura had in New York.  Someplace small and discreet, with low rent by city standards, filled with cheap IKEA furniture.  Someplace that feels temporary, that requires little effort and little upkeep.  When he came back to Beacon Hills, unsure of how long he was going to stay, his “safe houses” were the charred ruins of his family’s old home and a boxcar in an abandoned railway depot.  

Him purchasing his apartment building and living in his loft, as industrial and empty as it was, was his way of putting down roots, even if he did buy it under a fake name.  But he has low expectations when it comes to places to lay low, and always has.

He should’ve expected more from Braeden, of course.

It’s a small home, instead of an apartment, and it certainly isn’t ostentatious.  It’s inside the city limits, so Derek would guess the backyard isn’t big, though he can’t see much beyond the garage.  But there’s a flower box below the windows, the flowers looking incredibly well cared for.

“Does someone else stay here?” Derek asks.  He knows Braeden hasn’t been here in at least a couple of months, and doesn’t have much of a green thumb, even if she had been around.

“Not anymore,” Braeden says, quietly enough that only Derek can hear.  She fishes her keys out of the pocket of her leather jacket, finding a small silver one and fitting it easily into the door.  “The neighbor’s wife who has too much time on her hands takes care of the place, though.  She keeps track of the mail and mows the lawn, and I pay all the bills.  Live flowers make it look like someone’s living here.  Keeps people from getting ideas.”

The lock clicks, and Braeden swings the door open.  “You stay here with the bike,” she tells him.  “I’ll go open up the garage door.”

Derek waits awkwardly with the bike for a minute or two until the garage door starts to slowly creak upwards.  The garage holds a small, nondescript silver car with a valid Illinois license plate, the car parked close to the wall to make an empty space that fits Braeden’s motorcycle easily.  Derek helps grab all their stuff and wipe the bike down, though he leaves the quick check-ups on the bike’s parts to Braeden.  

“You can head inside, I’ll be right in,” Braeden promises, so Derek goes from the garage into the home.

It isn’t as cutesy as the flower boxes might have made him believe, but it’s much homier than he would’ve expected.  The walls are painted soft greens and blues, and all of the furniture matches.  The walls look like they’ve been patched over in some places, the plastering job not perfectly even, but with Braeden, Derek is sure that there’s probably an interesting story or two about why it needed new plaster in the first place.  The microwave and oven clocks in the kitchen all read the right time, and the TV in the living room is small but nice.

“The tap water should be clean, if you want some,” Braeden says, the sound of the garage door closing echoing behind her as she steps into the house.  “And our stuff can go in the bedroom.  It’s on the left at the end of the hallway.”

“I’ll go take it,” Derek offers.  “Just fill a glass of water for me.”

The bedroom is larger than Derek expects, with a king-size bed that looks incredibly comfortable.  There are two sets of dressers and a closet, with another door leading to a bathroom.  Derek takes a look around as he sets their stuff down on the softly carpeted floor.  The room definitely feels unlived in, the sheets perfectly made and everything smelling faintly musty.  The clothes in the closet are all protected by plastic covers, the hangers poking out through the top.  The blinds are shut, the room illuminated only by the last rays of sunlight peeking through the slats.

The only sign of personalization Derek can easily see is in a small picture frame on one of the dressers.  The glass is covered with a thin layer of dust, but Derek can still make out an image that is unmistakably Braeden, younger and softer, a smile on her face.  There’s a man next to her in the shot, his arm around her shoulder, laughlines prominent on his face.

“You okay back there?” Braeden asks, and Derek starts.  He leaves the photo, tucking it into the back of his head for the time being, and goes back to the kitchen to see Braeden sitting at the table with two glasses of water and a stack of takeout menus.

“Yeah, I’m good,” Derek tells her.  “Lots of options for food.”

“You’re back in the city,” Braeden teases him.  “We actually have more than five restaurants here.”  She flips through and picks a few out from the middle of the stack, handing them to him.  “But I’m feeling any of these tonight, so take your pick.”

Derek flips through the menu for an Indian place and hands it back to Braeden.  She calls to place the order, and Derek takes a long sip of his water, finally letting his shoulders loosen.  Sitting down in the kitchen, the trip finally done, makes Derek realize just how tired he feels, and if it weren’t for the hunger starting to creep up on him, he could doze off right there at the kitchen table.

The delivery person says it’ll be a long wait, so Braeden hangs her leather jacket on the chair and takes Derek back to the bedroom.  Derek carefully avoids looking at the picture frame while Braeden digs through the bags for unscented body wash and her shower cap.  Derek checks the bathroom to find a nice shower and two fluffy towels hanging from a rack.  He goes ahead and turns the water on in the shower, to give it time to warm up slowly, since he isn’t sure when the last time anyone ran the water was.

He hears the sound of the wooden dresser opening and closing and the pad of Braeden’s feet on the carpet.  It’s a soothing, familiar noise, the sound of her footsteps as familiar to him as the feel of her skin and the sight of her face.  He leaves the water to run and heads back to meet her, finding her fixing her hair, her clothes removed and put away.  

“You can’t shower with that many clothes on,” Braeden says.  Derek takes her gentle direction, stripping his clothes off slowly until he’s just as naked as her, the air cool against his skin.  

“Come on,” Braeden says gently as she adjusts the shower cap, making sure her hair’s totally covered.  “Let’s wash the road off so we can eat and get you to bed.”

* * *

 

Derek puts on the softest pair of sweats he owns after they shower so he can answer the door when the deliveryman finally comes.  He feels cleaner than he has in days, the grime and sunscreen and sweat finally rinsed from his skin, his traveling clothes thrown in the hamper.  The warm water from the shower has his muscles relaxed, the gentle touches from Braeden only helping tease the tension out.  He won’t be sore by morning, his werewolf healing helping there as much as with any other pain, but the stiffness easing is a blessing.

The food comes, and Derek pays the delivery man, bringing the food back to the table for them.  They eat and clean up, handwashing the dishes, because Braeden doesn’t have any dishwashing detergent around the house.  Braeden adds it to the shopping list on the freshly plugged in fridge, promising she’ll do a run tomorrow.

“I have to take care of some business, since we just got in town,” she tells him, “so I’ll take the car and stop on the way home.”

She goes through the methodical process of cleaning her boots, and Derek sits on the couch while she works, the TV on quietly, turned to some cooking show.  The host’s voice is soothing, and Derek’s eyelids are heavy, and before he knows it, he’s being gently nudged awake.

“The bed’s nicer,” Braeden says, her voice soft in Derek’s groggy head.  Her newspaper is cleaned up from the living room floor, the boots gone and the TV off.  Braeden’s dressed in a camisole and underwear, and she has her hair tied up for bed.  “Come on.”

Derek brushes his teeth in a haze, but Braeden is right; the bed feels like a cloud to his tired, heavy limbs, and the silk sheets are soft against his skin.  The room is totally dark, with no light from the new moon to cast any glow, and he hears the bed springs creak as Braeden slips into bed next to him.  

“Night Braeden,” Derek says when she finally stills, having found the most comfortable position.  “I love you.”

“Love you, too,” Braeden says, and Derek carries the warmth of it with him as he quickly falls asleep.

* * *

 

Derek is normally a light sleeper and an early riser, but when his phone buzzes, waking him up, it’s nearly 1:00 PM, and the bed next to him is empty.

“Coming home with groceries,” the message from Braeden says.  Derek drags himself up out of bed to wash his face and brush his teeth and comb his hair before she gets home, though he doesn’t bother changing out of his sweats.  He knows he’ll be helping Braeden take care of business before too long, but he thinks he should be allowed at least a day or two of not having to leave the house.  After all, he hasn’t had much of a break at all since he nearly died, with the long trip back from Mexico to Beacon Hills followed by a whirlwind of damage control and a long trip from California to Illinois by motorcycle.

Plus, the new moon has always made him more sedate, more easily tired.  He’s more present in his body during the new moon than any other part of the cycle.  The full moon is… complicated.  Riddled with unpleasant memories, a lack of control that was exploited and demeaned in equal measure, when he was too young to realize how fucked up it was.  

New moons are easier.  More low-energy physically, but much more stable emotionally.  During the new moon, he’s capable of wanting sex, sometimes.

He pokes around the house now that he’s more awake, noticing things he didn’t before.  There’s a whole downstairs level he didn’t see, somehow, with a small workout room, a laundry room, and a guest bed and bath.  There’s a pair of boxer briefs on top of the dryer and a bottle of Old Spice shower gel tucked under the sink in the bathroom, and Derek’s mind flashes back to the photo from the dresser.

“ _Not anymore_ ,” Braeden had said when Derek asked if anyone lived in the safe house.  It makes Derek curious, because obviously there was a point when someone else did.  Someone who stuffed the other dresser full of creased black slacks and white undershirts and boxer briefs and tube socks, a box of expired condoms tucked into the corner of the top drawer.

Derek stares at the photograph on the dresser.  It doesn’t bother him, but it does make him curious.  He knows that feelings are fuzzy for Braeden sometimes.  It isn’t often that she wants to enter into a romantic relationship, and though Derek knows he isn’t the first, it isn’t a topic they’ve really broached very often.  He doesn’t feel the need to press when it comes to her feelings, most of the time, because he’s secure in the fact that she knows she loves him.  And it’s really only fair; more often than not, Derek doesn’t really want sex, but Braeden has never pressed him to talk about his sexual history, and has never implied anything he hasn’t himself stated openly about the interrelation of his relationship history with him being ace flux.

She’s never commented on the way that, despite the fact that aggression and sexual desire often peaks for werewolves at the full moon, that’s when he’s actively sex repulsed, more often than not.  She doesn’t comment on the way there doesn’t seem to be a pattern to his sexuality, the rest of the time, besides the very loose and apparently contradictory way that it interacts with the cycles of the moon.  

He tells her bits and pieces, sometimes, but she doesn’t press for anything he isn’t willing to give her, curled up together in the bed, Derek tired and vulnerable, his defenses down.  It’s only fair that he give her the same respect and privacy.  It’s harder to ignore when he’s surrounded by the remnants of someone before him, but he thinks that sort of respect is something she’s due.

He’s so caught up in his thoughts that he doesn’t notice her until she’s already there, standing in the doorway as he perches on the end of the bed, staring at the top of her dresser.

“How do you feel about turkey sandwiches?” she asks.

Derek can see the way her mind works quickly, processing his positioning, where his line of vision is.  She doesn’t say a word about it.  Neither does he, easing up off the bed to meet her in the doorway.

“A turkey sandwich sounds perfect,” he says, giving her a lingering kiss, his breath still tasting of toothpaste, his hand finding the hem of her shirt.

“The longer you kiss me, the longer those frozen smoothie mix packets you like melt on the kitchen floor,” Braeden teases as she pulls away.  Her lips are full, her brown eyes bright, and Derek wants nothing more than to lean in and kiss her again, the smoothie mix be damned.  

“And the eggs,” Braeden adds as Derek leans in to kiss her again.

“Eggs don’t melt,” Derek says, his face close, as deadpan as he can manage.

Braeden laughs, and Derek cracks a grin as well, pulling away.  “Let’s go put the groceries away and make turkey sandwiches,” Derek relents, moving his hand from her hip to hold it outstretched for her to take with her own hand.

“We’ll make out after lunch,” Braeden promises.  “I scheduled some meetings with some old friends late tomorrow night, but I’m free until then.”

Braeden takes his hand, and they head to the kitchen, where the shopping haul sits, a stack of brown bags in the center of the floor.

“Making out after lunch,” Derek agrees, because sex is a hit or miss, a miss more frequently than not, but he’s always up for spending time with Braeden on the bed, kissing until their lips are sore.

* * *

 

They get the groceries put away and make lunch, sitting down at the table and taking their time eating.  Braeden catches Derek up on her day so far, and he’s happy that it seems like her morning was way more productive than his.

“There’s been a sighting here,” she tells him.  “A death or two following the usual patterns, too, so recent the bodies are practically still warm.  It’s only hearsay at this point, until I talk to an old contact or two, but it gives us something to work from.”

“So we might be in the right place,” Derek says thoughtfully.  

“If not, we’ll move on,” Braeden says.  “I want you to come with me, tomorrow, though.  The sooner we can figure out if it’s a false lead, the sooner we know if we need to move on.  Two pairs of eyes and ears are better than one.”

“We don’t want to lose her trail,” Derek agrees.  It feels weird to him that they could be back on the road when he’s just finally starting to feel at ease in the home, the faint scent of mustiness becoming familiar, Braeden’s scent starting to soak into everything around him.  He knows Braeden is right, though; wasting time trying to sniff Desert Wolf out in a big city like Chicago only to find that she wasn’t there in the first place would be a waste of their time, and would give her the chance to outrun them and hide.

They finish eating and do the dishes, Braeden nudging his hip as he finishes rinsing a plate and passes it off to her for her to stick in the dishwasher.  Derek nudges back, when he comes back with the next plate, his body very, very aware of all the places he’s pressed up against Braeden, her solid thigh and her hip.

Braeden puts the last of the dishes in the dishwasher, rolling them in without wasting the water to run a load quite yet.  They head back to the couch for a while, Derek giving Braeden the remote to flip through channels, Derek settling an arm around her shoulder.  She goes through the TV guide and then hums, turning the TV back off.

“Did you want to go back to kissing?” she asks.  “You seemed pretty eager.”

It’s an easy answer for Derek.  He loves the intimacy that comes with kissing, the way it’s sensual without necessarily being sexual.  He gets the taste of Braeden in his mouth, the feel of her soft skin under his hands.  He gets the feeling of Braeden on top of him, controlling the pacing so Derek can just sink into the wet, slick slide of his mouth against hers.  He likes the physical closeness of it, the way he can feel _and_ hear the noises Braeden makes and the way she makes him comfortable enough that she can hear his, too.

They start out tame, kissing like they were sitting, but it doesn’t last long before Braeden is pressing him slowly down against the cushions.  Braeden’s couch isn’t the comfiest place they’ve ever made out, the couch too short for even Braeden’s five foot eight inches.  But Derek still likes it, likes the way Braeden positions herself over him, letting him hold up some of her weight, her body a long, warm line against him.  Derek runs one of his hands down her back and back up, dragging the thin fabric of her shirt up and then dipping under to feel the smooth skin of her back.  He likes the way it makes her smell, her body responding to the touching and the kissing, the scent saturating the air around him, a haze of warmth and sweat and pleasure.

“What do you want?” Braeden pulls away to ask him.  He can feel how hard his cock is underneath her, how his body is responding, and he knows that the heady scent is a mix of his own arousal just as much as it is hers.

“Can I get my mouth on you?” he asks.  As turned on as he is, he doesn’t really want to be touched there.  But the idea of making her feel good makes him feel warm in the center of his chest, and he’s eager as she strips off her jeans and her underwear, his mouth watering as the smell of her slick hits the air.  She slides up on the couch, bracing herself with her left hand on the sofa’s arm as she lowers her cunt onto Derek’s face.  Derek buries his nose in her curls, using his tongue to trace her folds, to get as much of the taste of her onto his tongue as he can.

Braeden helps him along, guiding his mouth where she wants it, a combination of the gentle bucking of her hips to get the kind of direct stimulation against her clit that she wants when she’s this wet already and her right hand softly tugging at his sex-ruffled hair, coaxing him to work harder, to give her more suction and friction.

She comes hard, a rush of slick into his mouth, her thighs shaking and squeezing around his head.  Derek knows his own underwear is probably totally soaked through, but it doesn’t feel so pressing, in the moment.  Braeden’s hand pets at his head, slow strokes that smooth out his hair, and her praise echoes in his ear, letting him know he did a good job.  He can jerk one off later, if he still feels like it, the memory of Braeden moving them both so she can kiss him with the taste of her still in his mouth burned into his brain.

It used to make Braeden uneasy, that he didn’t always want sex, and that when he did, he didn’t always want to get off.  Braeden likes the give and take nature of sex, and it took a while to realize that the give and take just took a different form, relaxing Derek and making him feel useful.  Letting him make her feel good without violating any of his boundaries.

“I need to change my underwear,” Derek tells her, rubbing her side with his hand.  “You wanna take this to bed for a while?”

“You need a nap now, after you slept half the day?” Braeden teases, but it’s warm, her voice still a little throaty.  She’s in good shape, and not breathing as hard as Derek has made her before, but Derek is sure she could probably use a break, too.

“You’re dating someone who wears sweaters with thumb holes and likes dusty old books, no matter how many leather jackets I own,” Derek reminds her.  “Plus, I died not too long ago.  That should earn me naps for a few more days.”

It’s casual, for now.  The reality of it is still sinking in, that he could’ve been dead.  That everyone thought he was.  That he thought he was, for a moment, before he could feel his body starting to shift.  It had been hanging over his head for weeks, with the loss of his healing and his senses and his strength, but it didn’t feel real until that moment, and it hasn’t felt real since.  There’s concern in Braeden’s eyes; she was a U.S. Marshal, before she was a mercenary, and Derek knows that between the two, she’s probably had more talks about trauma and coping and PTSD than she’d care to admit.  

But Derek’s pretty sure she’s also been here, too.  So she lets it slide.

“Fine,” she says, standing up from the couch and picking up her discarded jeans from the floor.  “We’ll have naps, because I’m dating an old man.”

They both know the protesting isn’t entirely genuine.  When Derek wraps his arm around her, buried in the soft sheets on Braeden’s bed, she snuggles in closer, just as grateful for the contact and the rest as Derek.

* * *

 

They go to Braeden’s “meetings”, and Derek does his best to play undercover werewolf lie detector, his status temporarily unknown.  As far as Derek can tell, from the story and the bodies they’re snuck in to see, it’s real, and unless the Desert Wolf’s caught wind of them, or unless it was a get in get out kind of job, it’s likely she’s still in town.

They head home for the night, coordinates texted to Braeden’s burner phone for where the bodies were found, and a very, very faint common scent in Derek’s nose, barely discernible through the preservation chemicals and the scent of death.  It’s more than they had before, though.  Now they have to formulate a game plan.

They head to bed, though both of them are too jittery from the night to fall asleep easily.  They lay there in companionable silence, for a while, separate trains of thought racing through their heads equally loudly.  There’s a small peek of moonlight from between the shades, illuminating only the top of the dresser, the one with the picture frame on top.

“I need to get new blinds,” Braeden says, breaking the silence.

“You shouldn’t be able to see the moon,” Derek agrees, his voice sounding loud and clumsy even to his own ears.  “Not when I can barely even feel it.”

It goes quiet for a moment.  Derek knows, now, that they’re both looking where the moon is casting its rays, that he isn’t the only one thinking about things.  He knows she probably has even more to think about; she knows the man in the picture, knows who he is and what his significance is.

“He was my partner,” she finally says.  Derek tries to keep his face carefully neutral, to let her just talk, because it sounds like the beginning of a story.  She doesn’t look towards him.  “We were both Deputy Marshals.  Not the other kind of partner.  I would’ve liked it if we were, though.  He was the first person I had romantic feelings for.  I didn’t realize you could feel that way about someone, before that, and I haven’t felt it much since.”

“What happened?” Derek asks.  He doesn’t want to push, because he knows as well as anyone that some stories are hard to tell.  But there’s something in the moment that feels charged, private.

“I was promoted,” she says.  “He died a year or two later, and around that time I started getting too deep into looking for Desert Wolf.  Nothing ever happened because he was much better at following the rules than me.  Anti-fraternization rules were a big deal to our boss.  I stayed with him whenever I was in town, though.  This was originally his place, he left it to me.”

“He kept a picture of you on his dresser,” Derek says, “and he left you his place.”

“And nothing was ever going to happen,” Braeden says.  “Requited feelings, but no risk of getting hurt.  It was ideal.”

Derek doesn’t bring up that she did get hurt in the long run, or that there’s always that risk.  That people die.  He knows she doesn’t need a reminder of something they both know in their bones.  And he knows that it’s something that’s always going to be on both of their minds, that they’re one heartbeat away from heartbreak.

“Do you regret taking that risk with me?” Derek asks.

“Do you, with me?” she asks, flipping it back on him, first.

“No,” Derek says.  

“I keep expecting to regret it,” Braeden admits.  “Waiting for the fear of loving you to sink in as much as the fear of losing you.  It hasn’t hit yet.”

“Let’s hope it doesn’t have to.”

It takes a while, but Derek finally hears Braeden’s breathing even out, her heart beating slow.  It’s a comforting sound, a steady rhythm that he knows by heart now.  An audible reminder that there are good things in his life, people who love him with every beat of their heart in their chests.

Derek’s life has been an inconstant, mixed-up spin cycle of hope and sex and love and heartbreak and death, followed by a long period of digging himself out of the ground to drag himself back to the beginning all over again.  And there’s nothing that stops Braeden from following the usual pattern, and if he thought about it too hard, it’d be terrifying.

Right now, though, she’s curled up next to him on the bed, her hair tied up and her face smoothed out in sleep, and Derek lets the constant of her heartbeat drag him down to join her.

* * *

 

Derek wakes up to see Braeden next to him, still dozing.  The sun peeks through the blinds, and, for once, Braeden isn’t awake to see it.  Derek gives himself a moment to take in the sight of her, relaxed and at ease, beautiful in the glow of the morning light.

Now that he’s awake, he knows he probably won’t be able to fall back asleep, so he eases himself up to grab his phone.  There’s a single message waiting for him, sent from Beacon Hills at 3 AM Pacific Time.

“you aren’t coming back home soon, are you?” Scott sent.  

Derek sits on it for a moment.  He doesn’t want to send all of the details to Scott in text form, and he knows Scott won’t be awake yet to call, since it’s still early in Beacon Hills.  And he doesn’t want to say what his hazy morning first instinct is, staring at Braeden sleeping next to him in a bed that smells like both of them.  It would be cheesy and weird for Derek to say that he maybe is home, or that maybe here is home as much as Beacon Hills has been, for a long time.  That maybe home has become more flexible, more about the people he’s with than the place he is.

Scott would definitely tease him for it, though.  

He could say he doesn’t think he’ll be back soon, and it’d probably be the most honest answer.  He doesn’t know how long they’re actually going to stay here, even though they’ve stocked the home up now with baking soda and dishwasher detergent and toilet paper and scentless shampoo.  But even if they aren’t here, then they’re onto the next place, a constant sort of transience, hopping from place to place in a way that’s very familiar to Derek, by now.

“I don’t know,” Derek sends, finally, instead.  “But I’ll keep you updated.”

**Author's Note:**

> On tumblr [here](http://sleepy-skittles.tumblr.com).

**Works inspired by this one:**

  * [Graphics: round and round.](https://archiveofourown.org/works/9541214) by [madsmurf](https://archiveofourown.org/users/madsmurf/pseuds/madsmurf)




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